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Guild Houses
The guild houses are clustered in a vague circle around the Capitol of the city. They are extremely important, both as economic hubs and as symbols of the city. They are not only dedicated headquarters for the various guilds, but also serve as centers of commerce; most business is conducted in the guildhalls rather than in the markets or on the street- even the relentless buying and selling between people is a drop in the bucket compared to the contracts the guilds make with each other. The guild houses usually have at least a few distinct architectural quirks which were installed at great expense, on stylistic grounds. The guild houses are often filled with secret passages and rooms, which are not to be found on any map. This however only applies to the important guilds, which are important enough to require such finery, as well as being rich enough to afford it. This group is actually quite small since most of the guilds are a conservative lot; only the most culturally important guilds in the city feel the need to dress themselves up like this. As they say, an assassin without style is just an expensive thug. Arcane Guild Like all excellent design, the building is deceptively simple. From the outside, it looks to be a simple (bordering on dull) office for some respectable firm. The guild house is located a few minutes away from the main university. They have a sort of division of resources system in place; the guild had advanced practical facilities but only basic theoretical resources and the university is the reverse. The guild actually planned to have more floors than the capitol, but Primus requested that they let him indulge his arrogance. They grudgingly obliged, and agreed to keep the number of floors a few under that of the capitol. In the spirit of trolling, they simply made the height of individual floors much larger- on the (utterly spurious) grounds of needing to hold tall sculptures and machinery. As a result, their building is exactly as tall as the Capitol, down to the last millimetre- such is to be expected when architects choose to prank you. The tower stares right at Primus' office, gently mocking him; there was talk of building a terrace as well, but most of the guild agreed that there was such a thing as going too far. As is to be expected from an organisation whose sister is a university, they seem to be more of a research institute than a business or guild. Most of the building is populated by designers and architects scribbling away. The building also has a large yard outside, connected to the warehouse. This yard is intended for experimentation with mock-ups and prototypes, as well as for collecting deliveries of resources. At the apex of it is the meeting room where either guild members hold discussions among themselves, or receive bigwigs with whom to curry favour. Within the building there is an archive of designs, usually in 3-dimensional format such as a sculpture. The best of these archives are strategically displayed in various parts of the guild house; documentation is available on request. One of these is a miniature wheeled toy with a motor. It requires a human skilled in the arcane craft to power it, but when it does it's a fun toy to play with; especially sending it through the halls to annoy fellow guildsmen. This has formally been banned, which is informally understood as 'Made even more fun'. Merchant's guild The Merchants like to brag that their guild house is still, at its heart, a store like any other. The building has a storefront at the entrance, where members get a special discount. Upon entering, the first thing that you will notice is a golden plaque which honours their founder, and which lists their own commandments; these are quite similar to the _Ferengi rules of acquisition_ . Aside from that, their guild headquarters is a fairly traditional type of building. The architecture is modern and impressive, but still somewhat tasteless. As a merchant guild, it mainly handles imports and exports of goods. As a result the guild tower has well-developed communications and documentation systems; the ledger room contains detailed and exhaustively indexed records, all written in an amazingly neat hand. The guild house is extremely close to the docks as well, to better monitor the comings and goings of their vessels. This (along with the shipwrights, naturally) is the only guild house that deviates from the circular ring structure for practical reasons. The guild also has its own college for apprentices and novices; they find that the practical skills relating to money, such as knowing how to haggle and when to take risks, are not taught properly in any university. This is on the premises, albeit somewhat detached. The college itself is teeming with small shops selling everything from snacks to essay completions; these initially started high priced but have undercut each other to ridiculous levels. These shops are understood to be legal, as long as they pay the requisite fees. Shipwrights In an unexpected show of style, the shipwrights guild headquarters is topped with a giant sail and mast, making it look like a ship of the line- visitors to the city are greeted by this awe-inspiring symbol. The mast is wide enough that there is actually an elevator embedded in the tube; high-level guild members often come up here for a break or simply to gaze upon the docks and the massive fleet. The shipwrights guild headquarters are a hub of activity. It is the most impressive building on the docks, as well as the most technologically complex. The scale of production of ships is massive for the time, and the sheer size of the ships they construct necessitate some innovations. Since it is simply infeasible to build these ships one at a time, they have developed a basic system which resembles the assembly line. The ship hulls themselves are constructed around a wooden skeleton, which is suspended from cables on telekinetic pulleys. These take place over a platform, onto which the ship is dropped once it is assembled, where the rest of the construction continues. The guild has a forge with an assembly-line style system, where the propellers, rudders, and steering wheels are constructed. The workers here are little more than hired hands, and there has been talk of outsourcing this function, or simply moving the factory somewhere else. Bankers The banking guilds are so powerful that it's easy to forget that they run actual banks. The bank headquarters themselves are far older than their new-found prestige. They are designed to be extremely intimidating, and portraits of the bank founders stare down as you walk through the halls- many of them look down upon you with unmitigated disgust. The bank itself is a journey through time; old vaults, such as the accounts of the nobility, are in classical Medieval-style vaults, whereas those of the nouveau-riche and powerful are in the newest wing. This is partly for convenience in record-keeping, and partly because it wouldn't become a renaissance tyrant to deny the conventions of good taste. The bank vaults are extremely well guarded by the best kind of security- incredibly heavy doors and superbly complicated locks, with no human guards in sight. There is a small sect of elite staff who have access to the keys; these are the only ones allowed to access safe deposit boxes, with no exceptions. The banks even insist on making the safes themselves, based on designs from external firms. It is said among thieves that only a god could break into the Primus bank- and that you'd have to be one to avoid the city's retribution.